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24th July 2008, 15:33

Hi All
I have been playing around exchange since the open-relay ages of exchange 5 and 5.5 unfortunately I am yet to get my grubby hands on 2007 and I have just joined a company who I think have got the most bizzare method of gracefully shutting down exchange 2003.
I have previously opened the services console and shutdown the services individually or doing the system attendant that will shutdown the relevant dependancies then reboot the system as normal as advised by M$ qualified staff in previous employment.
here they open up the ESM and navigate to the storage group and dismount the stores. then fire up the services console and terminate all the services individually then reboot the box.... (the exchange servers are not on domain controllers)

to get more to the point what is the Best Practice for restarting an exchange 2003 server...

Why such machinations? IMHO in any Windows based server running any Microsoft product (Exchange, SQL, etc.) the proper procedure is to select Start... Shut Down... Restart. The OS will take care of shutting down the services in the proper order.

Who ever came up with the idea that you need to shut down the application services before shutting down or restarting a Windows server? It seems highly ludicrous to me.

There may be cases with some third party application that it needs to be shut down before Windows but in that case it is evident to me that it was not developed properly for the Windows platform and therefore has no business being on my Windows server.

Comment

Why such machinations? IMHO in any Windows based server running any Microsoft product (Exchange, SQL, etc.) the proper procedure is to select Start... Shut Down... Restart. The OS will take care of shutting down the services in the proper order.

Who ever came up with the idea that you need to shut down the application services before shutting down or restarting a Windows server? It seems highly ludicrous to me.

There may be cases with some third party application that it needs to be shut down before Windows but in that case it is evident to me that it was not developed properly for the Windows platform and therefore has no business being on my Windows server.

shutting down the exchange services prior to a reboot commits all transactions to the exchange DB without the chances of lost and speeds up the shutdown. normal shutdown will allow the process for the service to bomb with 1053 error (which you also dont see!!) causing problems thats from my own experience anyway

I wondered if anyone had come a "reccommended" procedure on this... I do agree with the agro of shutting each thing down Joe but that was kind of drilled in to me many moons ago

Comment

I realize that you've posted here to get opinions, best practice, etc. but I'm going to challenge your reasoning. Where on the Microsoft web site does it recommend shutting down the Exchange services before shutting down or restarting the server? It doesn't because that's not what MS recommends. If you find an MS article that contradicts what I'm saying I'll buy you lunch (or a beer).

The OS sends a shut down command to the application, which then performs it's own shut down routine (committing data to the DB). No special steps or precautions need to be taken prior to restarting the server and any thought to the contrary is ill-conceived.

Comment

This was true of Exchange 5.5 - shutting down the server without first closing the services resulted in shutdown times in excess of four hours. However, the very next variant of Exchange corrected this and it now works as advertised.

Tom
For my own and your protection, I do not provide support by private message under any circumstances. All such messages will be deleted and ignored.
Anything you say will be misquoted and used against you

Comment

I realize that you've posted here to get opinions, best practice, etc. but I'm going to challenge your reasoning. Where on the Microsoft web site does it recommend shutting down the Exchange services before shutting down or restarting the server? It doesn't because that's not what MS recommends. If you find an MS article that contradicts what I'm saying I'll buy you lunch (or a beer).

The OS sends a shut down command to the application, which then performs it's own shut down routine (committing data to the DB). No special steps or precautions need to be taken prior to restarting the server and any thought to the contrary is ill-conceived.

Haha yeah I agree nowhere have I found anything to say its the right way to perform an exchange shutdown I simply followed instructions from those with seemingly uber knowledge on the subject. I wanted to fire this question to the people who like me hang around this site as the "holy grail" of solutions (or it sure as hell points you in the right direction) does that mean I owe you a beer?

Comment

It all comes from the Exchange on a DC issue. SBS users will also benefit from shutting down the services first before reboot. Is not required, but makes for a faster reboot. If exchange is not on a DC, just reboot.

Comment

It all comes from the Exchange on a DC issue. SBS users will also benefit from shutting down the services first before reboot. Is not required, but makes for a faster reboot. If exchange is not on a DC, just reboot.

But dismounting, thats very odd.

Thanks Lior I too came across that didnt bother venturing into SBS territory for my reading. I am just confused as to why they dismount the stores as well as shut down the information store service which dismounts the stores anyway.....

Im just gauging peoples methods of a "graceful" shutdown as I cannot find anything which is "set in stone" regarding correct methods

Comment

SBS aside, you will not find anything about stopping exchange services. Exchange is not supposed to installed on a DC, hence Joe's rant

Ermmm I did say they arent on DC's perhaps people have misread no problem everything I have found so far tells me that shouldnt be done and thankfully its been noted by the people where I work prior to my joining I was just dumbstruck by the methods of shutdown here.